As this new year gets under way, I’m eager to shape the Sustain What flow - both the writing and webcasts - around your priorities and questions as well as mine.
Offer a prediction or describe a personal resolution or priority for 2023. I’ll offer responses by Friday. To kickstart things here are a couple of tidbits from me.
Revkin resolution: I resolve to answer last year’s call to action from the Energy Department’s Jigar Shah on Sustain What. For the first time in decades, vast federal funding now available for resilience and clean energy projects. Shah explained that the urgent need now is to boost community capacity to seek and put that funding to work. I’ll use Sustain What to highlight and spread strategies that can help. My full resolution is in this Columbia Climate School post.
Revkin prediction: I was happy to see Extinction Rebellion UK’s New Year’s Eve “We Quit” postannouncing it was shifting from divisive and dangerous public disruptions like roadblocks to disrupting power brokers and building alliances. I predict many other edge-pushing, soup-tossing, roadblocking groups getting millions of dollars for pressing the #climateemergency case won’t stop. As the director of a big funder of these protests explained on Sustain What, "I know that the vast majority of people hate the activists and are so angry about this. Okay. But we can still recruit the visionaries - the people who are done with normal mode. And guess what? There's more and more of them every day."
So even as these tactics lose the wider public, they recruit disaffected doomers. Great…
Please post your predictions and resolutions here. Link to relevant content. Share this post with others.
Postscript - For more perspectives on in-your-face climate activism, I encourage folks to explore this Twitter back-and forth including me, Margaret Klein Salamon, who runs the Climate Emergency Fund, and Dana Fisher, a sociologist (and frequent Sustain What guest) focused on social movements:
And make sure to read James Ozden’s Substack post on aspects of disruptive climate activism that he’s changed his mind on recently. He said his surveys (and others) show that, at least in Britain, there’s been little downside to actions including shutting down a major highway. But he’s worried that government crackdowns, including the passage of repressive laws aimed at such protests, are gaining traction. Yet another win and lose dynamic.
And make sure to read this New York Times article focused on German climate activism.
Casting one little vote, I'd like to see more of your reflections on "disaffected doomers" and those "who are done with normal mode". I'm puzzling over what are the most effective methods of being done with normal mode, and your input would be welcome.
I see normal mode and the cultural group consensus as a kind of mutual suicide pact. My confidence in cultural leaders of all types is dropping by the day. But, how to respond to that? Somewhere there must be a constructive balance between encouragement and poking the group consensus with an inconvenient stick, but where exactly such a balance might be found is still very much a work in progress here.
Andy, your comment on those "done with normal mode" has helped to give me a little window in to why I'm often sympathetic to those trying to rock the status quo.
Do I believe that climate change is a crisis? Absolutely, I'm totally on board with that claim. But, um, it appears I'm totally on board INTELLECTUALLY.
When I examine my own behavior, I um, well, can't actually recall a single change in my lifestyle I've made directly in response to the climate change crisis I supposedly believe in. As example...
Ok, sure, so my wife and I are vegetarians, which may be the simplest and most effective response to climate change an individual can make. But we became vegetarians decades before we ever heard of climate change.
What am I doing in response to the nuclear weapons crisis I'm always going on and on and on about? I'm blowharding all over the Internet, something I'd be doing no matter what the global situation was.
So, I dunno, maybe somebody needs to toss some soup on my head? Maybe the soup tossers have some insight in to how very skilled we human beings are at blowing smoke, clinging to the routine, and rationalizing whatever it is we want to do?
Submitting this comment will cause some power plant somewhere to crank out a little bit more CO2. I know this already, but here I go anyway, slamming down on the post button.
Keep up the good work, Andy! It’s great to boost the big dollars now available from the government for building clean energy.
I’d also like more discussion on getting people out of complacent, frozen mode and into productive climate action. This probably veers into the realm of psychology. 😏
I want to help direct my community selectmen to apply for the “vast federal funding now available for resilience and clean energy projects. Shah explained that the urgent need now is to boost community capacity to seek and put that funding to work.” Can you help provide simple steps a small community in Maine could take? ( Btw: I found Shah’s video to be quite condescending. The feds are very bad at communication and don’t advertise what they’re offering. It becomes the job of journalists to explain everything. )
Casting one little vote, I'd like to see more of your reflections on "disaffected doomers" and those "who are done with normal mode". I'm puzzling over what are the most effective methods of being done with normal mode, and your input would be welcome.
I see normal mode and the cultural group consensus as a kind of mutual suicide pact. My confidence in cultural leaders of all types is dropping by the day. But, how to respond to that? Somewhere there must be a constructive balance between encouragement and poking the group consensus with an inconvenient stick, but where exactly such a balance might be found is still very much a work in progress here.
May 2023 flood us all with the light of
love and compassion, or at least a little more kindness!
Happy 2023 New Year!
Joseph Chamie resolution: Continue writing about population levels, trends and issues.
Joseph Chamie prediction: 2023 will see an increasing rise in the religious right in various countries worldwide.
Andy, your comment on those "done with normal mode" has helped to give me a little window in to why I'm often sympathetic to those trying to rock the status quo.
Do I believe that climate change is a crisis? Absolutely, I'm totally on board with that claim. But, um, it appears I'm totally on board INTELLECTUALLY.
When I examine my own behavior, I um, well, can't actually recall a single change in my lifestyle I've made directly in response to the climate change crisis I supposedly believe in. As example...
Ok, sure, so my wife and I are vegetarians, which may be the simplest and most effective response to climate change an individual can make. But we became vegetarians decades before we ever heard of climate change.
What am I doing in response to the nuclear weapons crisis I'm always going on and on and on about? I'm blowharding all over the Internet, something I'd be doing no matter what the global situation was.
So, I dunno, maybe somebody needs to toss some soup on my head? Maybe the soup tossers have some insight in to how very skilled we human beings are at blowing smoke, clinging to the routine, and rationalizing whatever it is we want to do?
Submitting this comment will cause some power plant somewhere to crank out a little bit more CO2. I know this already, but here I go anyway, slamming down on the post button.
Keep up the good work, Andy! It’s great to boost the big dollars now available from the government for building clean energy.
I’d also like more discussion on getting people out of complacent, frozen mode and into productive climate action. This probably veers into the realm of psychology. 😏
I want to help direct my community selectmen to apply for the “vast federal funding now available for resilience and clean energy projects. Shah explained that the urgent need now is to boost community capacity to seek and put that funding to work.” Can you help provide simple steps a small community in Maine could take? ( Btw: I found Shah’s video to be quite condescending. The feds are very bad at communication and don’t advertise what they’re offering. It becomes the job of journalists to explain everything. )